When a 24-year-old Geoff Travis returned from travelling around north America with crates full of records he'd picked up from thrift stores and boot sales, he faced a problem: what to do with all the vinyl. The answer: open a shop, somewhere that was as much community centre as retailer. Eventually, Travis found a site in west London that seemed perfect. He named the new shop Rough Trade and opened for business on 20 February 1976. "It took quite a long time for people to realise we were there," Travis later recalled. "It was really empty for the first six or seven months. That was quite nice." Soon, though, the shop's supply of punk and reggae singles no one else would stock attracted a loyal clientele, and turned it into a crucial hub in the nascent indie scene: any new band simply had to get their single into Rough Trade's racks. That turned the shop into a de facto distributor, and when a French band called Métal Urbain called into the shop with a cassette they wanted released, Travis took the next step, establishing the Rough Trade label – arguably the most important of all indie labels.